King Solomon's Mines eBook

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness.
If the reader will refer to the rough copy and translation
of old da Silvestra’s map, he will see that
the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the “pan bad water” is set down as
being about in the middle of it. Now forty leagues
is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we ought
at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of
the water if any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully
along, scarcely doing more than a mile and a half
in an hour. At sunset we rested again, waiting
for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to
get some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight
and indistinct hillock on the flat surface of the
plain about eight miles away. At the distance
it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off
to sleep I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully
exhausted, and suffering tortures from thirst and
prickly heat. Nobody who has not felt it can
know what we went through. We walked no longer,
we staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion,
and being obliged to call a halt every hour or so.
We had scarcely energy left in us to speak. Up
to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry
fellow; but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o’clock, utterly worn out
in body and mind, we came to the foot of the queer
hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight resembled
a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and
covering at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate
thirst, sucked down our last drops of water.
We had but half a pint a head, and each of us could
have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off
to sleep I heard Umbopa remark to himself in Zulu—­

“If we cannot find water we shall all be dead
before the moon rises to-morrow.”

I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect
of such an awful death is not pleasant, but even the
thought of it could not keep me from sleeping.

CHAPTER VI

WATER! WATER!

Two hours later, that is, about four o’clock,
I woke up, for so soon as the first heavy demand of
bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the torturing thirst
from which I was suffering asserted itself. I
could sleep no more. I had been dreaming that
I was bathing in a running stream, with green banks
and trees upon them, and I awoke to find myself in
this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had
said, that if we did not find water this day we must
perish miserably. No human creature could live
long without water in that heat. I sat up and
rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as
my lips and eyelids were stuck together, and it was
only after some friction and with an effort that I
was able to open them. It was not far from dawn,
but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the
air, which was thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot
describe. The others were still sleeping.